Two miles south of the Rhenoster kopje stands Roodeval station, in which, on that June morning, there stood a train containing the mails for the army, a supply of great-coats, and a truck full of enormous shells.  A number of details of various sorts, a hundred or more, had alighted from the train, twenty of them Post-office volunteers, some of the Pioneer Railway corps, a few Shropshires, and other waifs and strays.  To them in the early morning came the gentleman with the tinted glasses, his hands still red with the blood of the Derbies.  ’I have fourteen hundred men and four guns.  Surrender!’ said the messenger.  But it is not in nature for a postman to give up his postbag without a struggle.  ‘Never!’ cried the valiant postmen.  But shell after shell battered the corrugated-iron buildings about their ears, and it was not possible for them to answer the guns which were smashing the life out of them.  There was no help for it but to surrender.  De Wet added samples of the British volunteer and of the British regular to his bag of militia.  The station and train were burned down, the great-coats looted, the big shells exploded, and the mails burned.  The latter was the one unsportsmanlike action which can up to that date be laid to De Wet’s charge.  Forty thousand men to the north of him could forego their coats and their food, but they yearned greatly for those home letters, charred fragments of which are still blowing about the veld. [Footnote:  Fragments continually met the eye which must have afforded curious reading for the victors.  ‘I hope you have killed all those Boers by now,’ was the beginning of one letter which I could not help observing.]

For three days De Wet held the line, and during all that time he worked his wicked will upon it.  For miles and miles it was wrecked with most scientific completeness.  The Rhenoster bridge was destroyed.  So, for the second time, was the Roodeval bridge.  The rails were blown upwards with dynamite until they looked like an unfinished line to heaven.  De Wet’s heavy hand was everywhere.  Not a telegraph-post remained standing within ten miles.  His headquarters continued to be the kopje at Roodeval.

On June 10th two British forces were converging upon the point of danger.  One was Methuen’s, from Heilbron.  The other was a small force consisting of the Shropshires, the South Wales Borderers, and a battery which had come south with Lord Kitchener.  The energetic Chief of the Staff was always sent by Lord Roberts to the point where a strong man was needed, and it was seldom that he failed to justify his mission.  Lord Methuen, however, was the first to arrive, and at once attacked De Wet, who moved swiftly away to the eastward.  With a tendency to exaggeration, which has been too common during the war, the affair was described as a victory.  It was really a strategic and almost bloodless move upon the part of the Boers.  It is not the business of guerillas to fight pitched battles.  Methuen pushed for the south, having been informed that Kroonstad had been captured.  Finding this to be untrue, he turned again to the eastward in search of De Wet.